Bulletin of Faculty of Humanities, Sapporo Gakuin University, No.

86 21-36, 2009

New understandings of Butoh Creation and

Creative Autopoietic Butoh
- From Subconscious Hidden Observer to
Perturbation of Body-Mind System

Toshiharu Kasai *

ABSTRACT
The 1999’s paper of Butoh dance method for psychosomatic exploration was developed by
employing psychological concepts such as hidden observer in the subconscious, mirror
neuron, multiple controller system of body-mind, and affordance, together with the
psycho-motor factors such as precision movement, butterfly effect, system perturbation and
antagonistic movement, in order to locate essential creativity of Butoh. These concepts
rendered dichotomic Cartesian ideas of “choreography” and “improvisation” obsolete in
discussion of the non-egocentric and autopoietic structure of Butoh. The present author’s
long term practical approach to Butoh, including dance therapy sessions at mental clinics,
as an individualization process in Jungian sense, confirmed and validated the practical
significance of these concepts in the body-mind exploratory Butoh.

Keywords: Butoh, autopoiesis, Hijikata, Ohno, performing art, creativity, psychosomatic,

mirror neuron, somesthesia, dance therapy, posthypnotic suggestion, hidden observer,
state bound memory, affordance, catastrophe, butterfly effect, chaos, perturbation,
antagonistic movement, choreography, improvisation, primary process,
individualization, Cartesian dichotomy, Noguchi Taiso

Introduction

The third sphere of Butoh

Ten years passed since the first version of Kasai’s Butoh Dance Method was written in
1999 [1,2,3,4]. After 20 year’s Butoh dance life as Itto Morita since 1988, also 10 year’s
Butoh activities through a Butoh dance group GooSayTen with Mika Takeuchi, my
Butoh experiences and its concept have considerably deepened.
Most of the developments of my Butoh understanding come from Butoh trainings and
dance therapy sessions because of the reality and freshness I feel when I lead sessions
face to face for general trainees and patients of mental clinics. (At mental clinics, Butoh
dance approach is modified considerably in order to make the dance therapy session a
safer and more secure occasion for vulnerable members. [5]) On the other hand, Butoh
performances have been a challenge or ordeal in a different state of consciousness,
* The author is grateful to Paola Esposito, Ruth Emsley, and Pawel Szynkarczuk for their valuable
making myself more vulnerable to inner impulses and more open to physical stimuli
comments about Butoh studies and body-mind practices. Email: kasait@sgu.ac.jp

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coming from my own body and the surroundings. Usually I find it almost impossible to
remember what happened at some points of my performance because of the total
self-immersion and the state bound and dissociated memory during the performance.
Also, Mika Takeuchi and I have lead dance therapy sessions at mental clinics
respectively for 10 years. In the meanwhile, both became certified dance therapist of
Japan Dance Therapy Association. In the course of such practices, we have noticed an
essential relationship between some mental aspects of schizophrenia and our Butoh
performance in terms of artistic creativity and its body-mind vulnerability. In particular,
the loose ego boundaries of schizophrenic mind could be analogous to the mental
attitude of Butoh (or Butoh-tai) performed in a different state of consciousness, and
both schizophrenics and Butoh-ists are often dangerously open themselves for
“intruders” as if the irrational dream world was actualized in daytime while the
ordinary consciousness is left unprotected. S. Freud employed two terms to deal with
these worlds: 1) the primary process of the world of dream or the unconscious where
unrealistic things and their transformations are usual, and 2) the secondary process
where “reality principle” functions based upon the decision making subject. (S. Arieti
explained the close connection between creativity and the primary process, and its
schizophrenic “paleo-logic” [6].)
One of the essential differences between the primary and secondary process is
whether or not there is a core subject kept in charge of perceiving, thinking, and
deciding. Cartesian view consists of a dichotomized body-mind, explained as the
relationship between the controller and the controlled, which would well correspond to
Freud’s secondary process, but not at all to the primary process where the decision
making subject not only loses its initiative but also becomes infiltrated by various
unrealistic things.
In the present paper, Butoh is conceived of neither solely as dance nor as art, but
rather an exploring process of the embodied primary process of the body-mind or the
Butoh as “the third sphere”. Hijikata’s words as the originator of Butoh might have been
describing this state of Butoh, “Butoh is … a dead man standing upright desperately”.

“mi”: The integrated body-mind

The term “mi” is a frequently used Japanese common word meaning an “integrated
body-mind”. This word was well analyzed by a Japanese philosopher Hiroshi Ichikawa
in his book “Structure of mi”(1984) [7] in his body-mind philosophical studies. Whereas
the idea of non-dichotomized body-mind “mi” is usual among Japanese people,
Cartesian understanding ― the contrast between body and mind, or the controller and
the controlled ― is taken for granted especially among the people who speak so-called

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Standard Average European languages (S.A.E. by B.L. Whorf who proposed “linguistic
relativity hypothesis” [8] with E. Sapir). This dichotomized understanding appears to be
a stumbling block for workshop participants outside Japan in grasping the nature of
Butoh. Arguments about the body-mind or the controller versus the controlled are
mostly carried out by using two words “choreography” and “improvisation”. But these
words are totally inadequate because the decision making or objectifying subject is
totally blurred in the peculiar state of consciousness of Butoh as an embodied primary
process.

Mirror neuron and Butoh as somesthetic art

In 1996, a new finding was reported about the existence of “mirror neuron” in the
brain of macaque monkey [9], proving that some of the neurons responded when the
monkey saw a person pick up a piece of food as well as when the monkey picked up the
food. By only watching other’s behavior, the neurons respond as if the monkey itself did
the same action. The shock waves of this finding passed through the world not only in
the neurophysiologic field but also in philosophy. This is because the Cartesian
body-mind dichotomy might turn out to be obsolete, or because one of the
phenomenological questions of how we recognize the other also might be only a
speculative fantasy as the other is something already given in the brain through the
mirror neuron activities. Although there is a discussion whether the direct application
of the physiologic finding as mirror neurons to the philosophy of consciousness is valid
or not [10], the mirroring exercise in dance movement therapy or in education of autistic
children, etc. has been positively reframed on a large scale by the finding.
Performing arts are usually regarded as a kind of visual art. However, if visual
stimuli created by other’s bodily movements activate somatic reactions (at least surely
in the brain due to the mirror neurons) of the audience, it should be recognized and
appropriately defined as “somesthetic art” or art for bodily sensation. The third sphere
of Butoh described in the present paper, or Butoh for the psychosomatic exploration
would be a starter of this new somesthetic art form. In fact, our Butoh performance
often takes a special body-mind state aiming at deepening the subconscious state of the
audience by using “mi-utsushi” or body-mind “echoing”, which sometimes makes the
audience even to freeze as if hypnotized.
*Most hypnotic induction methods have both verbal and bodily procedures with
various types of muscle stiffening technique (except Milton Erickson’s approach). Also
in a group hypnotic induction, it is known that watching others fall into hypnotic
state enhances the hypnotizability of watching people. This mutual relationship
between the body and mind, also among the people, might be called “mi-utsushi”,

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which would be similar to the mirror neuron phenomenon. These understandings

about hypnosis or unconscious influence are based on the author’s several studies
about the difficulties of arm relaxation and its relationship to the socially conditioned
bodily tension reactions [11]. (Body-Learning Therapy includes the dissolution of the
socially conditioned body, or the body de-socialization.)

The purpose of this paper is threefold: 1) To show another aspect of Butoh as an

integrated psychosomatic exploratory process by overcoming the dichotomic
understanding about the body-mind, 2) to show the relationship between Butoh attitude
(“Butoh-tai” for the third kind of Butoh) and recent theoretical developments such as
mirror neuron, affordance, perturbation of system, and several other psycho-motor
factors in order to understand the essential structure of creativity in Butoh, 3) to
understand the author’s Butoh experiences as the process of self-actualization in terms
of Maslow or the individualization process of Jungian sense.
Some of the following topics have already been included in my recent paper “The
Principle of Somatic Psychotherapy and the Viewpoint of Body-Learning Therapy”
(2006) [12], but because it did not include several ideas of the present paper, this paper
is the theoretical successor of my Butoh paper in 1999.

I. Inadequacy of the word “choreography”

Kazuo Ohno’s Butoh is improvisational, whereas Tatsumi Hijikata’s is all

choreographed. This is a clear example of how people tend to understand things in a
simplified but erroneous way. Ohno grasped a tiny memo paper in his hand and was
checking it repeatedly before performing. Was it a choreographical note or Butoh image
memo? Ohno was arguing sharply with his son, Yoshito, when he was practicing for
co-performing a Butoh piece. Did his improvisation need so much prior negotiations?
Hijikata changed his performance style at least three times, including
non-choreographed performance called “happening” and total choreography for his
talented disciples such as Yoko Ashikawa, etc. who were willing to embody Hijikata’s
dreams onstage. A paired comparison is easy to understand. However, it runs the risk of
inviting unnecessary misunderstanding as if discussion about either choreography or
improvisation is decisive. Through ever repeated unfruitful discussions using the words
“choreography” and “improvisation” in explaining what Butoh is or how Butoh-ists
perform, the author came to a conclusion at some point that we have to find out other
terms and concepts. Because we have already known that the conscious self called “I”
does not always judge or control solely what happens next in performing Butoh, it is an

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old-fashioned myth that the conscious self does choreograph and dictate the body to
move as prescribed, or the conscious self does improvise and change prearranged
movement patterns as the conscious self has just decided to improvise. Even if the word
improvisation means some involvement of the subconscious impulses or other
accidental influences from inside or outside, the action of intentional switching from
choreographed patterns to non-prearranged patterns sounds rather egocentric and still
values the decision-making subject “I”. Of course, both words, choreography and
improvisation, have nothing wrong in themselves when used to describe dance
performance in general. However, because they implicitly connotate the Cartesian
dichotomic ideas, it is necessary to avoid them when discussing Butoh; otherwise it is
difficult to explore the reason why Butoh has been “avant-garde” or still iconoclastic
even more than half a century has elapsed since Hijikata originated it in 1950s.

II. To the world of Ankoku Butoh

Tatsumi Hijikata originated “Ankoku Butoh” (dark black dance) in 1950s in Japan.
Artists and literary circles in those days called his eccentric dances “an-koku
(dark-black)” dance, and he adopted the name. (We have two words, “butoh” and “buyo”,
meaning “dance” in Japanese. Butoh consists of fluttering “bu” and stamping “toh”,
buyo with fluttering “bu” and dancing “yo”.) In the monumental Butoh dance piece in
1959, “Kinjiki” (Forbidden Color), with homosexual themes, a chicken was choked on
the stage and killed in a total darkness… It was a shocking dance piece for the audience.
Soon after this performance, Hijikata was expelled from Japan Modern Dance
Association, and his name and Butoh had not been officially mentioned in Japanese
Almanac of Art almost until his death in 1986. Yoshito Ohno, who co-performed then
with Hijikata, later told that he did not kill the chicken; “it was living and hatched eggs”.
In 1980, young Butoh performers of Sankaijuku flew to France to perform, and were
highly praised by European audiences. Sankaijuku has ever since been performing as
one of the best Butoh companies in the world. After their success, a lot of Japanese
Butoh performers left Japan where almost no dancers could live on dance, and moved to
Europe and America, starting performing and teaching Butoh in various countries.
Ankoku Butoh was gradually called “Butoh” through its proliferation and
internationalized process.
In 1988, two years after Hijikata died of cancer, the present author attended a week
long intensive Butoh workshop held by Semimaru, member of Sankaijuku, in Otaru city,
a seaside town of Hokkaido, where Ichiro Ojima had been running his Butoh troupe
“Arutai” (Altai) after “Hoppo Butoh-ha” (Northern Butoh Sect) had dissolved there. I

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was deeply impressed by the Sankaijuku Butoh performer’s embodied sense and ability
to comprehend what was going on in terms of body-mind. I belonged to Arutai and
started performing Butoh as Itto Morita.
One night, we were practicing at an old and dark studio named Banshokan, once
a movie theater. I was waiting for something impulsive coming from inside, and my
right arm suddenly started twisting. While I was at a loss, the twisting movements
overwhelmed whole my body. I felt as if my right arm was torn off from my shoulder
and elbow joints. My right arm had undergone surgical operation when I was young,
and was agonizing. That was the real starting point of my Butoh life

In these 20 years, while practicing and performing, I have been surprised to discover
something physically new and fresh and something deep or heavenly pure in my mind.
Most of those experiences are not retrieved well, only left as a memory trace or a kind of
bodily memory or perceptual vestige. While wishing I could have comprehended a bit
more about these mysteries, I have been exploring them through practicing and
performing Butoh as a psychologist.
Psychological knowledge works as stepping-stones, on which it becomes possible to
support your body-mind and gaze into the sea of the subconscious world. Or, it is a rope
to tie your body-mind with the ordinary reality when shaken by overwhelming emotions
or other intruders. The psychological explanations in this paper are not only
academically obtained knowledge but also experientially confirmed to be necessary and
effective in order to survive before falling to a possible mental confusion or breakdown
in the embodied primary process of exploratory Butoh.

III. Altered states of consciousness

Charles Tart (1969) [13] discussed that we have different states of consciousness,
after studying hypnosis with E. Hilgards, and called it “altered states of consciousness”.
Some states of consciousness are directly connected to physiological body-mind states
such as sleeping, sleep deprivation, fasting, oxygen deprivation, nitrogen narcosis,
alcohol, psychotropic agents in general, or various dancing, religious training of various
kinds, or sensory deprivation, hypnosis, etc.
Toru Iwashita, Sankaijuku member, is well known as has been having dance therapy
sessions at a mental hospital near Biwa Lake in Japan for 20 years (he had been a
vice-president of Japan Dance Therapy Association until 2007). It has been reported
that he could somehow make the inmates with negative syndromes of schizophrenia
start moving. What kind of factors are necessary to elicit such reactions among the

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schizophrenic patients is not clear, but so-called Butoh-tai, a mental attitude in Butoh,
seems to be relevant as a kind of another mental state in order to communicate with
people of a special mental state.
In my dance therapy sessions at mental clinics and in other private sessions, I noticed
that I did something that I had not planned beforehand, which puzzled me and made
me recollect myself, and I have concluded that I must have been affected by unattended
information from participants, such as their subtle posture or movement changes, or
other nonverbal stimuli coming to my subconsciouness as if I was given unconscious
suggestions through the mirror neuron firings. My ego boundaries might be thin or too
permeable in Butoh related activities, maybe similar to most of schizophrenics whose
ego boundaries are likely to be invaded by something coming from subjectively felt
“outside”, not only through the walls of ego boundary but also through the bottom or
through the ceiling of ego boundary, if an analogy is helpful. A daytime collective
unconsciousness or primary process would be surely one of a terrifying form of altered
state of consciousness where the subject loses its non-subjective function of
objectification and the perceived world becomes filled with something uncanny.
*Schizophrenia can be understood as a pathological state of consciousness, probably
brain’s functional anomaly, in which the existence of the self is threatened or not
preserved stably. Its syndromes may be partially formed by inappropriate
counteractions or their failures as seen in the behavioral invalidity under the
Double-Bind situation found by G. Bateson [14] where both doing and non-doing
are not allowed.

Apart from psychological understanding, the phenomenological sociologist Alfred

Schutz proposed a theory of multiple reality [15]: People are living in plural realities
while leaping from a distinct field of a reality to another reality called “finite province of
meaning”. His realities consist of social roles or mental states, and Multiple Personality
Disorder patients might be a good example of this theory except one thing: MPD
patients’ real trouble is that the previous experiences and memories are not transferred
to the next alternated personality, and they suffer from memory loss. If we live in such a
society while leaping among the multiple realities as Schutz thought, MPD itself would
not be a problem, rather a natural situation, but the accompanied memory loss would
appear main obstacles for MPD patients.
Usually, because a certain set of memories is obtained in a particular state of
body-mind and is strongly connected solely with the very state of its physiological, social,
and other situational contexts, the state dependency of memory or memory dissociation
occurs. One can’t retrieve well a certain set of memories if it has been obtained in a very

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different body-mind state. An altered state of consciousness, hence, tends to induce the
natural amnesia or memory dissociation. In any traumatic experience, because it is too
extraordinary a situation to be experienced in the normal state of mind, an alternated
state of consciousness is produced, and its memory is dissociated. In some Butoh
exercises, for example, extremely emotional twitching or shivering sometimes elicits
fears or other strong emotions, sometimes accompanying long forgotten memories
unexpectedly, which can turn out to be a serious starting point of exploration of
embodied “psycho-archaeology”.
*Exploratory Butoh does not aim at psychotherapy, whereas Body Learning
Therapy based on Butoh is a body-oriented psychotherapy and gives necessary
interventions as in trauma treatment. Psychological trauma needs more than
talking therapy because its syndromes are embodied and consist of complicated
cognitive-emotional-bodily factors as the brain’s three systems’ approach has been
found effective [16]. Body Learning Therapy employs Butoh as a means and safe
container for any panic behavior accompanying shivering, etc. by regarding those
non-usual reactions as autogenic release and ultimate art form.

IV. Hidden observer in the subconscious

Earnest Hilgards, an eminent American researcher of hypnosis and hypnotizability

scale, carried out a series of psychological experiments by employing highly
hypnotizable subjects (1977) [17]. A subject was instructed to soak his left hand into a
container of iced water, and to report verbally the degree of pain due to the coldness
using the order scale, such as “1” for no pain, “2, 3, 4”…and “10” for unendurable pain.
The reported numbers soon increased, and it reached to 10, which meant that it was too
painful to keep the left hand in the iced water. But, before this experiment was carried
out, the subject was hypnotized deeply and was given post-hypnotic suggestion known
as “automatic writing” (by right hand): “During the experiment, your right hand keeps
writing the degree of left hand’s pain on a sheet of paper without being aware by
yourself”. Then, the subject was instructed to come to amnesia of this post-hypnotic
suggestion. What Hilgards found was that the written degree of pain did not rise steeply,
and did not reach the maximal pain. There came out two different sets of pain report
obtained by one person simultaneously. In order to understand this result without
discrepancy, Hilgard proposed a hypothesis called “hidden observer”: There is another
vigilant subject existing in the subconscious layer independently from the conscious self.
This was the first scientific confirmation that there can be plural observing/reporting
systems in one person. (Multiple Personality Disorder is not directly related to his

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“hidden observer” hypothesis. In MPD, there is always one controlling subject existing
although the controlling subject itself is switched to another set without conveying the
past experiences to the next one.)
This could have been a socially epoch-making finding, shaking the whole society by
inviting blurred responsibilities of each individual person, but its impact remained
limited and was soon buried under the immense body of other psychological studies.
One of the reasons for such inattention came from our cognitive tendency to negate facts
if these are not harmonious with what are already conceived true by the person or in the
society. Another reason was the difficulty to replicate his experiment in a large scale,
because of the very limited number of highly hypnotizable subjects that could be
recruited.
While the “hidden observer” hypothesis has been neither verified nor fully negated in
a scientific sense, Hilgards’ other experiments about “hidden observer” gave clues to
understand analogous phenomena such as the tip of tongue. When we try to remember
a thing, all we do is to try to remember the forgotten thing (or its relating situations or
superordinate concepts) consciously, and after a short time we come to notice that we
have gotten the thing with aha experience. This shows that there is a controlling center
somewhere in the subconscious that takes a role of memory exploration and transports
the search result to the conscious. In the tip of tongue phenomenon, nothing comes out
from the subconscious exploratory system, and we are frustrated. Hence, it would be
natural to suppose the existence of a memory-searching agent in the subconscious layer.
Hilgards asked his subject to narrate a story verbally, while his right hand was
instructed, by using the post hypnotic suggestion, to keep writing the story without
being noticed by the talking subject. The written story was found containing the plots or
outlines of the verbally narrated story as if the automatic writer took the role of the
base scenario writer. Although this experiment was not so much exactly controlled and
the result analyses were not so satisfactory, its implication was the same with his
previous iced water experiment, showing the possibility of “hidden observer” hypothesis.
It should be concluded that the dichotomized body-mind and the dichotomic idea of the
controller and the controlled lose its traditional predominating status.

V. Affordance and precision of movement

The precision of body control in dance movements would be at least about less than 10
millimeters, and maybe at most about 5 millimeters in a practical sense, although there
are amazing metalworking professionals whose manual precision is known within a
couple of hundredth millimeters. (One of our hair splitting Butoh exercises was

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described in “Hijikata and Ohno” 2006 [18].) In order to enhance movement precision, it
is insufficient to allow the conscious “I” to simply choreograph one’s movement sequence
beforehand because there are lots of factors that deviate prearranged patterns inside
one’s body and in the outside world. Hence, the precision movement depends on the
sensitivity to catch what is happening time to time, and also on the precise control
ability of the body. A simple mechanical robot with a simple walking program would
soon fall down if it does not use the information of the road condition, such as muddy,
stony, grassy, or etc. In Noguchi Taiso or Noguchi’s physical exercise system, employed
by most Japanese Butoh-ists, it is taught that muscles should work rather as sensors
than effectives to catch information of the body and the outside world.
Jerome J. Gibson coined the word “affordance” in 1977 [19] in the field of ecological
psychology, and its significance in the movement control has been appreciated lately. An
example of affordance is as follows: when there is a tea cup of a certain shape, size,
weight, etc. in front of us and we try to hold it, but the actual way to catch it will be
guided by the several physical attributes of the handle, its location, shape, size, angle,
texture, etc. The physical attributes of an object “afford” your movement, or dictates
how our grasping movement should be. Also, while approaching the cup, we have
implicit anticipations about, for instance, how much finger tension will be necessary to
lift the cup. These anticipations are based on our similar experiences, but the cup might
be heavier or more slippery than one has anticipated. It is not until we have just
touched the cup that we realize our implicit original plan for cup lifting is unrealistic or
failure. The world is filled with silent uncertainty.
The concise definition of affordance is “stimulus-response compatibility”, meaning
that the interaction of one’s plan or intention with the physical world is essential. The
egocentric Cartesian idea has no place within the concept of affordance because the
mind must keep asking the mindless object for necessary information and reply to their
answers in order to avoid any behavior failure. The smaller the exploratory touching
movement is, the more effective involvement is possible with the object. This shows why
Noguchi Taiso has been brought into Butoh training in 1960-1970s in Japan: Precision
training is essential to explore and control one’s body-mind, and enhance the body-mind
ability to relate itself to the physical world more flexibly and effectively.
In Noguchi Taiso, however, enhancing the precision in the body movement does not
mean fixing the body with undue muscle tension but means the necessity to find out the
most economical way to relate to objects (including the body parts themselves) in terms
of muscle tension. Because he regarded the man’s body as a kind of coacervate or a
leather bag filled with water in which muscles, bones, viscera are all floating, the
precision training in Noguchi Taiso is a process of dynamic and flexible adjustment of

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both body-parts and outside objects while finding the possibility of passive movement
among them. It should be noted that his ideas described, for example, in his first book
“Gensho Seimeitai to shiteno Ningen (Man as a primordial life form)”1972, not yet
translated, have become more important due to several contemporary concepts
explained in this paper.
When we wear a quite elaborate gorgeous costume, the body comes to dance in the
costume, with eventual rubbing of the skin with the inside of the cloth: This is a
precision training for somatic or somesthetic sense through skin perception although its
subtle movements would not become something discernible for others. (Note that the
passively given world of this kind can be related to the schizophrenic mental landscape.)
When we walk painfully slowly but with the least enough muscle tension to support the
body, it is a precision training for proprioceptive sensation of relating bones, muscles
and viscera while searching their dynamically stable alignments. Sometime,
accompanied physical pains can be a good guidance for movement precision when
approaching body-mind limitations in an extreme situation.
A couple of precautions would be necessary in pursuit of movement precision: First,
precision training does not mean that the conscious self should control the body
completely, which would result in the old dichotomy again. Rather, the necessary
attitude would be “wishing” to actualize more precise “passive movements”. Any
attempts to have a direct control of the related muscles and tendons might run the risk
of falling into “end-gaining” pitfall as described in Alexander Technique. Second,
precision training eventually tends to induce more vulnerable body-mind situation
because of the heightened ability to perceive the slightest and previously unnoticed
discrepancies of a given movement. Hence, the precision training would paradoxically
give rise to unpredictable and creative breakdown not only in the ongoing movement
but also in the body-mind state reverse to what is intended.

VI. Butterfly effect and perturbation

The reason why “hair-splitting” precision training is necessary is twofold: First, it is

the only way to master one’s body-mind to its limits, by which Butoh for psychosomatic
exploration is substantially deepened. (Note that painful exercises in Butoh would be
necessary to recognize body-mind limitations as far as they don’t harm.) We have
noticed that only a small number of people are interested in and capable of perceiving
small bodily differences, and also that only some of them could reach, for example, a
right sitting posture where the heartbeat makes the upper body’s pulsating movement.
Second, creative development in movements starts from a small difference. In my Butoh

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exercises and performances, I have enjoyed that seemingly trivial small things, whether
mental or physical, often initiate a new movement or psychosomatic discovery, leading
to a total new creation of performance or to a new body-mind state.
The phenomenon of how a small change eventually creates a drastic change has
recently become popular and known as butterfly effect, employing the idea found in the
theoretical studies about the weather forecast where a small amount of perturbation of
the airflow, say, caused by a fluttering butterfly, determines how the global weather
changes in the future. This is one of the basic understandings of Chaos theory, where
initial conditions of a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term.
However, without long term accumulating effects, a discontinuous big change can occur
in the system’s structure due to a small amount of change or perturbation. A simple
example would be the transition of water from liquid to gas where a slight temperature
change from 99.99 degree centigrade to 100.00 degree transforms the state of water
drastically.
Suppose a ball or globe on which the westerly winds are blowing along the same
latitude like jet streams. If there occurs a small perturbation in the airflow upward to
the north pole, every co-centric westerly airflow is eventually connected due to the
upward perturbation, yielding upward spiral airflows from the south pole to the north
pole. A negligible small perturbation can transform the stable co-centric airflow
structure into a gigantic upward spiral. But, if the small perturbation is not upward but
downward, the direction of the resulting spiral winds is opposite and downward to the
south pole. Once the direction is determined by the small amount of perturbation, the
resulting large-scale process cannot be reversed soon.
Rene Thom, topologist, has theorized about the discontinuous shifting of vector field
pattern on various mathematical manifolds like the formentioned example, and
proposed the Catastrophe theory [20] by showing seven basic discontinuous
transformations such as Fold catastrophe, Cusp catastrophe, etc. His theory may be
helpful to understand analogically the process of sudden movement change in Butoh
performance. For example, a small splinter in the floor or a memory of barbed words
would affect your way of keeping balance slightly, and eventually deflect the walking
direction or the way of walking, rendering a scheduled movement sequence all void. A
tiny distracting factor, perturbation, plays a role of a watershed or dividing ridge for the
subsequent course of actions, which enables Butoh creation in an unimaginable way.

VII. The antagonistic movement and non uni-dimensional dissolution

So far I have tried to show that dualistic ideas such as Cartesian dichotomy of the

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body and mind are too simple to grasp the Butoh of the third kind for psychosomatic
exploration. However, most body-mind phenomena tend to be explained in a dualistic
way such as extensor versus flexor, emotional arousal versus social refrainment, or
conflict between id and superego, etc. When the two antagonistic powers, whether it is
physical, mental or symbolical, collide with each other and the both matches in their
strength, their collision appears to come to a halt temporarily while, figuratively,
generating heat. But, in this condition there is still room for some perturbation to
intervene, so that two antagonistic sets of muscle, for example, give rise to vibration in
the colliding area. In the course of psychosomatic exercises, twitching, shivering, or
convulsive movements usually dissolve themselves by a sudden jerky movement. For
example, the movement of the lower jaw spasm would, as a result, induce a sudden
facial distortion, outburst of breath, or jerky movements of other parts of the body, and
the jaw spasm itself ceases for a moment. The breakthrough occurs neither in the first
direction nor the second direction, but somehow in an irrelevant area. The resolutive
third area is not foreseen before experiencing the actual collision of two rivaling powers.
When those antagonistic movements occur in body parts relevant to the muscle armor,
one of Reich’s key concepts, the experiencing process could be a starting point of body
oriented deep psychotherapy.
A prominent philosopher Kitaro Nishida (1880-1945) pioneered Japanese version of
philosophy based on his ample Zen experience, and founded his own philosophical field
by developing peculiar ideas such as “pure experience”, included in his first book “Zen
no kenkyu (Study of Goodness)” (1911), and “self-identification of absolute
contradiction”, one of his famous claims late in his life. The latter, meaning that
absolutely contradicting elements should be already in the state of being identified
themselves, struck me with wonder more than 40 years ago as a way to transcend
essential contradiction dynamically.

One day, while practicing antagonistic movements, Nishida’s old enigma

suddenly revealed its secret to me, at least a part of it. Because two antagonistic
powers are in conflict, they construct one common dimension on which they locate
themselves. That is, the antagonistic vectors or exact collision of two powers should
be always uni-dimensional. Furthermore, by finding a suitable another dimension,
the contradicting two elements would be overlapped and become identical when the
dimension is fold imaginarily at its center as in Factor Analysis or Multi
Dimensional Scaling… How redundant these words are, when compared with the
direct bodily experience of the uni-dimensionality of antagonistic conflict.

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In order to have this sensation, the body should realize the precise collision with the
exact opposite direction. This realization also reminded me one of my past experiences
that I could once stand up sharply straight on the ground while practicing Noguchi
Taiso’s “dangling the relaxed body upward against the earth”, and had a deep feeling of
the direct connection with the earth core. Both experiences have revealed themselves
with a strong body-mind realization as a uni-dimensional phenomenon.
The discussions described so far range widely from psychological concepts to
mathematical models, and it would not seem easy to integrate all of them. However, if
the term “autopoiesis” is adopted, meaning “self-creation” or “self-organization”, one of
the recent ideas about the living system proposed by Maturana and Varela (1980) [21],
the major points of the present paper may be analogically covered. That is, Butoh
creation is not a process of consciously directing the body, but a process of auto creation
or autopoiesis of new bodily behavior through affordance. Accordingly, the body-mind
exploration of Butoh becomes an attempt to realize this autopoietic process by
discharging the conscious self as much as possible. (Practically, the autopoietic process
and the conscious control are not mutually exclusive, coexisting while varying their
strength.)

VIII. Self-actualization through Butoh

In the deepened bodily sensation experienced through Butoh practices concerning

affordance, perturbation, and antagonistic movement, a variety of forlorn emotions can
be perceived well as they loom: Some are personal and others may be coming from the
collective unconscious or depth “archaeo-mind”, and bodily exploration of these surging
and fading is the role of the Butoh practice of the third kind for spiritual journey.
In my Butoh life, there seemed nobody who matches me as a Butoh-ist and
psychologist/dance movement therapist. Most performers are mainly interested in
Butoh as a dance or art form, but not so much in psychological or psychotherapeutic
aspects. Almost no psychologists are interested in Butoh except some dance therapists
or body-oriented psychotherapists. I have been actualizing myself by working hard
physically and mentally, and have been individuating myself in Jungian sense for
peaceful coexistence of sanity and lunacy. At the same time, because of my multi-valued
activities and resultant dispersed energies, I have eventually sacrificed my stable social
belongingness, man’s third motivation in Maslow’s need system, maybe in both fields.
During these 10 years, my previous Butoh papers were subscribed in various
countries, and visitors to our Butoh studio tend to be interested in every aspect of Butoh,
not limited to traditional Japanese Butoh, mainly because they have been trying to

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 Bulletin of Faculty of Humanities, Sapporo Gakuin University, No.86 21-36, 2009

create their own Butoh in their own cultural, social, and physical backgrounds. What I
explained in the present paper may not be the subjects that many other Butoh-ists are
likely to deal with, but I believe, as a Butoh-ist of 22 years of performing life exploring
Butoh as lifework, that the contents of this paper are the quarry for the authentic Butoh
not only for the psychosomatic exploratory one but also for performing Butoh and
artistic Butoh as my first Butoh paper has been.
I also believe that there are two factors that should be retained as a core of authentic
Butoh; one is essential creativity, the other essential seriousness. We have an old saying
by a Chinese Buddhist monk Rinzai that “when you meet Buddha, kill Buddha”,
probably for total creativity and ultimate seriousness. Buddha himself told his disciples
long before: “Don’t go along the same path together, walk alone like a rhinoceros”.
Whereas Buddhism has soaked into Japanese mentality, Butoh itself has nothing to do
with Buddhism in its origin, but both seem to need the same attitude: solitude,
seriousness and exploration.
It was said that Hijikata imagined a bright and heavenly world of Butoh,
contradicting to dark-black An-koku Butoh, after his series of “Tohoku Kabuki Keikaku
4” (Northeastern Kabuki Plan No.4) in 1985, one year before his death. Because the
body-mind exploration often leads to a contradiction and needs creative breakthrough,
when the most serious precision walking in this paper ended up with a ludicrous
stumble, it might be a most creative and ideal tribute to his unfinished dream, Butoh.

REFERENCES

1. Toshiharu Kasai "A Butoh Dance Method for Psychosomatic Exploration" Memoirs of Hokkaido
Institute of Technology, No.27, 309-316, 1999
2. Toshiharu Kasai "A Note on Butoh Body" Memoirs of Hokkaido Institute of Technology, No.28,
353-360, 2000
3. Toshiharu Kasai and Kate Parsons "Perception in Butoh Dance" Memoirs of Hokkaido Institute of
Technology, No.31, 257-264, 2003
4. Toshiharu Kasai "Arm-Standing Exercise for Psychosomatic Training" Bulletin of the Faculty of
Humanities, No.77, 77-81, Sapporo Gakuin University 2005
5. Toshiharu Kasai “Sense of safety and security for creative works nurtured by meditative Butoh
dance movements” 10th ECArTE conference (European Consortium for Arts Therapies Education in
London), 2009
6. Silvano Arieti “Creativity: Magical Synthesis” New York, Basic Books 1976
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Research 3, 131-141, 1996
10. Daniel D. Hutto “Beyond Physicalism” John Benjamins Publishing Company 2000

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 New understandings of Butoh creation and creative autopoietic Butoh (T. Kasai)

11. Toshiharu Kasai “Reconfirmation of the difficulty of arm relaxation task” (Japanese), Japanese
Journal of Hypnosis, Vol.41, No.1-2, 34-40, 1996b
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Therapy” (Japanese) Bulletin of the Faculty of Humanities, No.80, 85-141, Sapporo Gakuin
University 2006
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16 Claudia Herbert "Healing from Complex Trauma: An Integrative 3-Systems' Approach"
in "About a body" Eds. J. Corrigall, H. Payne, H. Wilkinson, Routledge 2006
17. Ernest R. Hilgard "Divided Consciousness - Multiple Controls in Human Thought and Action"
Wiley Interscience 1977
18. Sondra Fraleigh and Tamah Nakamura "Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo" Routledge
Performance Practitioners 2006
19. Jerome J. Gibson “The theory of affordances” In “Perceiving, Acting and Knowing” Eds. R. Shaw
and J. Bransford, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum 1977
20. Tim Poston and Ian Stewart “Catastrophe: Theory and Its Application” Dover Publications 1978
21. Humberto R. Maturana, and Francisco J. Varela “Autopoiesis and Cognition: the Realization of the
Living”, Dordecht: Reidel Publishing Co. 1980

(Toshiharu Kasai: Professor of Department of Clinical Psychology,

Faculty of Humanities, Sapporo Gakuin University, Japan)

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